


Ultimately

by amorae



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Gen, I will go down with this ship I swear to god, Love, Love Story, M/M, Romance, Sadstuck, Unrequited, Unrequited Love, WHAT ARE MY FEELINGS, dave strider - Freeform, is in love with, john egbert - Freeform, romance story, unrequited love story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-19
Updated: 2011-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-27 13:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amorae/pseuds/amorae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Egbert is no stranger to romance. Ultimately, though, he is in love with Dave Strider.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ultimately

**Author's Note:**

> Some of this was really, really fun to write (for instance, the stuff with Karkat is pretty much completely taken from my last relationship, right down to the weird...troll...biology......) while other parts were a little more difficult.  
> I will go down with this ship I swear to God. John/Dave for some reason is my ultimate OTP. And today I decided John was gonna be the one ~madly in love~ because, well, it's never, ever, John. It's always Dave. So John needed a chance.  
> Enjoy...lemme know if you see any glaring mistakes, in a grammatical or in a characterizational sense!

There is something funny about being in love.

You’re not entirely sure what it is about being in love with Dave Strider that makes your knees knock in funny ways. You’re not entirely sure what it is about being in love with Dave Strider that makes your heart hitch and your grip on reality slacken the slightest bit when he looks at you. You’re not sure what it is about being in love with _Dave **fuckin’** Strider_ that makes you forget what you previously defined “love” as. Love now has one meaning, and you don’t even have to think it anymore—you feel it as it takes over you, as it engulfs your veins, as it breathes life into your heart. You know that it is a living and breathing thing that has nestled itself deep inside your soul, and you know, that for as long as you live, “Dave Strider” will always be synonymous with “love.”

It’s not like you haven’t dated other people.

You tried that thing with Rose. It didn’t work out so well. She was impassive and unemotional. You wanted to watch action-packed rom-coms, and she wanted to psychoanalyze your infatuation with the movies. You wanted to rant about Nicholas Cage, and she wanted to compare your idolization of him to an Oedipus Complex. You wanted to spend an afternoon making out and cuddling on a couch, and she wanted to take notes on your behavior and your desires and what it meant in the grand scheme of the relationship.  
No—dating Rose LaLonde did not work out, and she smiled at you wanly when you broke up with her.

You heard from Vriska two days later that Rose had hooked up with Kanaya not an hour after you broke up with her.

Ouch.

So you moved on to Vriska, and it was a little weird dating a troll. But you had feelings for her. Your breath would do the small little hitch thing as you stared down her body. You would feel the lust rush through you as you watched her lips quirk the slightest bit at your hesitancy. And while having sex with a troll was weird, you enjoyed it, and she seemed to enjoy it, too—even if it was a little funky and a little reminiscent of having sex with a spider. (What you’re trying to imply here, of course, is that she would lift herself off of the bed and clutch you with her arms and with her legs, and she would force you to rotate your body so that she was forever clamoring up and around you. You weren’t sure if you liked that aspect of sex with her.)

When things didn’t quite work out with Vriska, you felt a little hopeless, sure. You had had feelings for her, and she was the one to break up with _you._ What was wrong with you? What made you undesirable?

Then Karkat came along, and Karkat had admitted his feelings of black rom had faded into the flushed quadrant. He asked if you’d be willing to try a relationship, if it meant no hate-sex and only love for each other. You tried to protest that you weren’t gay, but he told you to “shut the fuck up and think about it.” So you did. You went home and you thought about it.

After a good long night of consideration and thought and fear, you decided to give Karkat a chance. You decided that it couldn’t hurt to give him just one measly chance, and that dating one boy—not even a _human_ boy—wasn’t going to make you gay. You decided to give him a chance.

Over time, you developed feelings for Karkat. You began to wonder if you could even fall _in_ love with him. The way he looked at you, the calm demeanor he always took when the two of you were together, the happiness that shone through his features, even in the deepest of scowls—well, it got to you. It touched a part of you that you didn’t think would ever be awakened. At the very least, you began to care for Karkat.

The first time the two of you kissed, it was magical. You were afraid to kiss him—Vriska had said some pretty nasty things about you behind your back. But he helped ease you into it, taunting you, trying to goad you into it. Eventually, you had to put a pillow in front of his face, kiss the pillow, and then slowly draw the pillow away from between the two of you before you were able to kiss him on the lips.

It was a magical first kiss, all things considered.

You felt a tiny flutter in your heart and you asked yourself, _is this love_? But of course you didn’t respond. You just gripped his face, enjoying the smooth ruggedness of his skin, the rough texture of his horns, the coarse strands of hair that fell between your fingers. You worked your lips against his well into the morning, to the point where both of you were tired and raw from kissing, and you fell asleep holding hands in the dark.

The first time you had sex with Karkat was special, too. It was emotionally charged, and you continuously asked yourself throughout the scene whether or not the feelings you were feeling were romantic or platonic. You took charge, of course, and were ever-fascinated by troll biology. Everything was so weird and different yet so the same that it was like exploring new territory that you had studied on a map. You made him orgasm, or the troll equivalent, and helped him hold his bucket. It was an emotionally charged moment for him, and as a result, for you, too.

But, as most teen romances go, it didn’t work out. You became distant as your mind wandered and he grew restless. Eventually, he dumped you, immediately jumping on Terezi for comfort and as a rebound. Somehow, you couldn’t bring yourself to care.

Those were the nights when your mind began to nestle somewhere between Dave’s jaw line. When you began to study his lips in your head, minutes before you drifted off to sleep. Those were the nights when you fell asleep with his face floating just out of reach of your conscious and his name perched on your lips, as if you were about to whisper your secret into the dark of night. You would wake up and reach blindly out for the future that was not there, and pull back disappointed with empty fingers. Those were the nights when you only allowed yourself the satisfaction of him in your dreams.

Of course your sister began to notice. As your eyes became sunken with possibility and hope, she quirked her head and asked you what was wrong. When you mentioned it had to do with romance, she laughed—an adorable laugh, one that would have made your heart crawl into your throat if you hadn’t been related to her—and told you not to worry, that Dave would come to his senses eventually.

It startled you so much you avoided Jade and the topic of Dave for days. But, as all things must, you returned to the source. You sat down with Jade and you let yourself cry. You let yourself feel everything you had been hiding back, all of the questions and thoughts and hopes that had only manifested themselves in the middle of the night as you clutched a pillow to your chest for comfort. You cried for what was so beautiful yet so far from your reach. She held your hand and told you it would be okay.

This is where you are now.

Lying in bed, dark surrounding you on all four corners, with only one person in mind. You feel his name singing through your veins. You feel the heat of his face burning in the pit of your stomach, like a flame meant to keep you alive. Your heart beats, and you could swear that it’s saying his name.

A tear trickles down your face as you realize something: you are in love with Dave Strider.

Not the stupid, teen romance type of love, either. You are in love, the spend-my-life-forever type, the kind that only exists in fairy tales and movies. You want to stand on top of a mountain and scream out to the world that you are in love with Dave Strider, the kid with tousled blond hair and shades that are much too big for his face. You want to hold hands with him, kiss him, love him, be with him, become one soul, you want to press your bodies together so tightly that you become one person, one being—

And it will never happen. Because Dave Strider has his sights set on someone else, and he talks to you about them every time you even try to bring up the topic of romance. You know this person is not you, because he has told you their name, and their face, and their location. This person that Dave adores is not you, and nothing can hurt worse than that simple truth.

So instead of ruining what you have with him, you ignore it all. You ignore the feelings and simple yet honest love that you feel for him because it’s so much easier than facing the hardships that admitting it all would bring. You content yourself with being best friends with him, and with being his soulbro for the rest of eternity. Because honestly, it’s better than nothing, and it gives you the chance to be madly in love with him without ever having to break the bond that you have. It gives you the chance to be a couple without the strings. Ultimately, it gives you a chance to be with him, and that’s all you really need.


End file.
